Chapter 12
The next time he wakes up it’s to the smell of food, something with a hint of spice. He cracks an eye open to find T’Challa standing beside him with a bowl of something, “please tell me you didn’t make that,” he says. One meal gone wrong was more than enough for him, thanks.
“I did not, and I have been banned from the kitchen again,” T’Challa tells him. Tony goes to shift his position but an irritated meow stops him from moving too far. Cleocatra is curled up on his stomach and glaring at him, but when he resettles she stops her glaring and lays her grey head over her paws. “She does not like being disturbed during her sleep and is often under the impression that she runs Wakanda. To be fair the people would likely let her,” T’Challa says, reaching out and scratching the space behind the cat’s ears. Tony can feel her beginning to purr and wasn’t that just cute.
“She’s cute, even if she’s sitting directly on my full bladder. So, what do you mean you got banned from the kitchen again?” he asks, sensing there was a story there.
T’Challa sighs, “do you want the long version or the short version?” he asks and Tony considers it but it wasn’t like he had anything else to do. Rhodey was in total violation of the bro code by ditching him to go hang out with Shuri under the guise of leaving him to bond with his soul mate, never mind that his soul mate gave him food poisoning.
“Long version, why not?” he says, watching as T’Challa circles the bed to sit on the other side with his bowl of whatever. As soon as he settles Cleocatra all but jumps off Tony, pressing all four of her little paws into his sensitive gut and launching herself towards T’Challa. “Useless sack of hair,” he accuses, glaring at the cat. She doesn’t look the least bit repentant for her actions.
“If you would like to get technical she is actually a hair covered sack of organs, not a sack of hair, and she is technically useless but I love her anyways,” T’Challa says, carefully shifting his bowl to the other hand so he could pet his cat.
“Yeah, yeah, little traitor,” Tony tells her, shimmying out of the bed so he could at least pee before the cat took up residence on his bladder again. When he returns he feels sick still, and tired, and his poor ribs have picked back up in pain, but the bed is at least soft and inviting and T’Challa had a story to tell him. He curls back up on the bed and yawns, tired still, but looking expectantly at T’Challa. Instead of starting his story he hands Tony the bowl he had brought in. Tony takes it hesitantly, sniffing at it but it gave nothing away. Whatever T’Challa fed him hadn’t smelled horrible either, and yet here he was- wait, “is that rice blue?” he asks, frowning at the bowl of soup.
“It is, and I assure you it is delicious,” T’Challa tells him.
“Uh huh, I’m sure you thought that about whatever it was you fed me last time too. What was that, by the way?” he asks. He had yet to identify the food and he’s thought long and hard about it too.
T’Challa hangs his head, “oh I must have bastardized that dish something fierce if you could not even identify it,” he says. He gives the cat a horrified look and yeah; Tony’s stomach was in agreement with that assessment.
“So what was it?” Tony asks again.
“Can we simply ignore my shame?” T’Challa asks, looking much like a kicked puppy.
“Can’t be worse than Dummy’s cooking, he once fed me oil on toast thinking it was peanut butter. Idiot bot,” Tony says, shaking his head. He didn’t even realize until he went to grab the second piece of toast and noticed that the substance on it was a little odd and then he proceeded to freak out a little. In the end he was fine but he refused to take food from the bot without checking it first from then on.
“I cannot believe my cooking has been compared to that of a robot’s,” T’Challa mumbles, head still hanging in shame.
“I can’t cook either, it isn’t really a big deal,” Tony says. He could bake though, really well, but that was basically chemistry with food. Cooking was less precise and he always got confused on how much or how little he could add of something so the food always ended up over spiced or under spiced. His pies, however, were to die for if Rhodey’s mother was to be believed and Tony didn’t think the woman would lie. She hated Tony for the first two years of his friendship with Rhodey, then she learned about his conditions at home and took him under her wing and tried to give him basic life skills with very minimal success. He did pick up on baking quick though.
“You do not understand, food is important in Wakandan traditions, it is important that I can provide for my soul mate and I gave you food poisoning,” T’Challa says sadly.
“Dude, I’m a billionaire, I don’t need you to take care of me but thanks though. Besides, I’ve been doing fine on my own,” he points out. Cleocatra, because she is an asshole intent on taking advantage of their distraction, tries to shove her head into his bowl to eat the soup but she wasn’t the first cat Tony has ever dealt with so he shoos her out efficiently.
“Cleo!” T’Challa scolds, plucking the cat off the bed and dropping her on his other side. The cat climbs back over him in seconds, looking at Tony’s bowl like she was biding her time but T’Challa gives her a stern look so she stays put for the time being. “I do not care how much money you have it is my intention to take care of you, should you let me. And you have not been doing well on your own, you’ve spent your entire life alone and it has not ended well for you most times,” T’Challa says.
“Yeah, okay Debbie Downer, feeding me isn’t the only way to take care of me you know, you could always pet my hair and tell me I’m pretty,” Tony jokes cheekily. “But you have a story to tell, how’d get banned from the kitchen?” he asks, neatly evading the subject of soul mates and being taken care of. T’Challa notices, he watches T’Challa notice, but thankfully he doesn’t call him on it.
Instead T’Challa sighs, “when I was a child I was very irritating, I have no idea how my father dealt with me in hindsight. But anyways, I rather disliked gym classes and not because I have ever been bad at sports, I am actually quite good at sports. But who would like to run around and sweat for an hour and be forced to sit in sweaty underwear until school is out? And I was not putting dirty underwear in the same bag I kept my lunch in. I maintain to this day that that is disgusting. Anyways, to avoid my underwear dilemma I decided that princes do not run,” T’Challa says primly, making a face of distaste. Tony snorts because he didn’t seem to mind running with a purpose if that whole Bucky thing was any indication.
His aversion to physical activity clearly changed with age considering the level of training he must have received too, Tony remembered the way he fought. He was graceful and elegant and he managed to catch Clint’s undefeatable arrows. That was more than a little impressive. “My father, however, caught wind of this and I suspect Shuri simply wanted to see me suffer in my underwear,” T’Challa says, drawing Tony’s attention back to him. “He decided to teach me a lesson in hubris and appeared unexpectedly to my gym class and made sure I worked twice as hard as my classmates. For a week. I was not impressed with the state of my underwear.”
Tony finally breaks and starts laughing, his ribs flaring up in pain immediately but imagining little T’Challa running around annoyed about his sweaty underwear was hilarious. T’Challa must feel the flare of pain because he gives Tony a worried look but Tony continues laughing anyways. He took that as a good sign given his body didn’t generally let him do things that hurt unless he could actually recover from them, like laugh despite hurt ribs. Granted Tony usually pushed himself anyways but still, he hasn’t done a whole lot of laughing lately due to his ribs forcing him into stoicism. “That’s fucking hilarious,” he tells T’Challa when he finally regains control over himself. Cleo tries to use his distraction to make a second bid for his soup but he fends her off and shifts himself a bit, careful of the soup, and decides to take his chances with the food. “How’s this relate to getting the boot from the kitchen though?” he asks, spoon paused over the bowl.
“Patience is not your virtue,” T’Challa notes, “I am getting there. After this terrible week of gym my father informed me that a good leader knows he is in a position of privilege and he does not ever abuse that position, especially not at the cost of others. I was seven, I was not interested in being a good leader, I was interested in avoiding dirty underwear, but I learned my lesson nonetheless. Do not ever allow Shuri to find out what I was doing in class,” T’Challa jokes. Tony lets out another snort and sticks the weird blue rice soup in his mouth and almost moans it tasted so good. Damn, T’Challa being banned from the kitchen was the best. He quickly shovels the food in his mouth as T’Challa continues.
“So, because my father was intent on making sure we appreciated our privilege he started to teach Shuri and I basic life skills. The first of those skills was cooking, which we took to like a fish to lava. We tried, very hard actually because my father was an excellent cook and Shuri and I wanted to make him proud. We failed in that, in fact we failed so badly we accidentally lit the house on fire and were subsequently banned from the kitchens for life. I, however, decided stupidly to brave the kitchen again in an attempt to court you properly and gave you food poisoning. So I have been banned again for the health and safety of all those who eat my cooking,” he says, going back to hanging his head in shame.
Tony sets his now empty bowl on the nigh table to his right, watching as Cleo skirted across the bed quickly to investigate the remains of the food. She was disappointed to find nothing but when she sticks her face in too far she lets out a loud sneeze, likely because the spices irritated her nose. “Yeah, I’d prefer you not trying to feed me again, thanks. But I do appreciate what you’ve done with the Avengers,” he says in an attempt to make T’Challa feel a little better. “So what else does this courting this entail, hmm?” There were no courting rituals or whatever in America or most other Western countries though plenty of other countries and cultures had their own traditions.
“We are supposed to get to know one another, learn about each other’s lives, cultures, hopes and dreams. We’re supposed to learn how to take care of each other, to love each other. There are specifics but I will not bore you with the details. To be honest I have done a poor job of dealing with this and- I had a dream once, not long ago. You did not see color when you saw me, from the feel of your thoughts it was like you have seen color your whole life. Is that true or do you have another soul mate or-” T’Challa doesn’t mean to choke on his own words but apparently Tony having more than one soul mate was too much for him to handle. So the slightly jealous monogamous type, then. Plenty of people had more than one soul mate, sometimes even more than two though that was rare.
“To my knowledge I don’t have another soul mate,” Tony tells him, “but I have always seen in color yeah. When I was little mom thought I was just really good at guessing colors but one time she was dressing up to do to some function and she was trying to decide between a dark purple dress and a dark blue one. I told her the purple one would look prettier and pointed to the correct dress, which tipped her off. So she got two more dresses that were basically the same cut but two different colors and asked which one was the red one and I chose right. She went through a few more articles of clothing but it was pretty obvious I wasn’t a good guesser, I could see the colors. Doctors never did figure out why,” he says. Not for a lack of trying, Howard was not pleased with the idea of his son not having a soul mate, god forbid he not know what he had with Tony’s mother. Personally Tony never did consider their relationship a goal of his as much as he loved his mother. He was horrible to her and Tony didn’t want to be like that to anyone, even if he forgot that for a long time.
T’Challa visibly relaxes when Tony says he doesn’t have another soul mate and listens to the rest intently. “Well… there is no point in lying, I am quite pleased you do not have some other soul mate. I have never been fond of the notion of sharing a soul mate; despite my father’s best efforts I remain selfish about certain things. I have no desire to split my attention with more than one person, nor would I be particularly happy with you splitting your attention between me and someone else. though your ability to see color is peculiar,” he says, frowning.
Tony grins, “T’Challa, King of Wakanda, the jealous type. Who would have guessed?” he says, snickering.
“Shuri could have told you this long ago. I had a nasty competitive streak as a child and I was not a very good loser, or a good winner for that matter. She was often the victim of this and I am convinced that she still half hates me for it. I do not blame her, I was an awful child,” T’Challa says, shaking his head. Tony gets the distinct impression that T’Challa is blowing things out of proportion because Tony couldn’t imagine him being anything less than his perfect self. He doesn’t realize he said that out loud until T’Challa laughs softly, “you are far too kind for your own good. I ignored you for a month, drastically botched our first meeting, and gave you food poisoning. I would hardly constitute that as perfect.”
“Yeah, but you also made an effort to see me for me, not how everyone else sees me and trust me that has happened a grand total of three times and one time got revoked. You defended me to my ex team mates even if I don’t really deserve it, you deported one of them, and you moved the rest to a safe house on the country’s limits and surrounded them by Dora Milaje. You treat your prisoners better than that, literally, given that your prison systems are surprisingly nice and actually humane. You’ve done more for me than anyone has, minus Rhodey, in a really long time,” he says honestly.
Even Pepper hasn’t really been all that supportive in… in a long time if he was honest with himself. He loved her, still sort of did, but she hadn’t been able to handle all the changes that came with being Iron Man, especially after New York and the wormhole. It was no one’s fault, he was hard to handle before all this shit happened and after… after he had panic attacks so bad that they’ve nearly ended the world. That is terrifying and he understood why she had to walk away from that, even if it hurt like hell to see her go. She’s been there for him for a long time and he wished it was something different that made her break, it wasn’t like he was short on flaws, especially pre-Iron Man, but something had to give eventually. And Rhodey was right; something changed when they ended up in a romantic relationship there was no coming back from it.
For a long moment T’Challa remains silent and in his own musings Tony almost misses it. “Your ability to focus on the positive is astounding. We both know I have done you wrong and that I have a lot to make up for, do not pretend I have made no mistakes,” T’Challa says softly.
“Have you got one of those inflated senses of guilt too? Yeah, maybe we started out rocky and no, I don’t really trust you right now even if your sketchy blue rice was actually really good, but you haven’t screwed up that bad. Some of it was understandable even if I didn’t really appreciate it, and god knows what your mental state is even like given your father’s death. I was a mess after my parents’ acc- murder. I can’t really blame you for being in an altered state of mind,” he points out. T’Challa is shaking his head before he’s even done though, which causes Tony to lift a brow.
“Do not use my father’s death as a way to excuse my behavior, that is not fair and it does not allow me to take full responsibility-” Tony decides to cut T’Challa off.
“Just because I know you must be at least a little bit of a mess, even if you’re good at hiding it, doesn’t mean I’m about to let you off the hook. That just means I’m acknowledging the circumstances, which happen to be exceptional ones. Don’t think sending your Dora Milaje to spy on me is going to fly any time in the future, even if I understand objectively why you went that route. Asking to meet me would have gone over far better, FYI.” He probably would have sent Rhodey unless he was harassed into going too, but still. T’Challa still would have gotten a relatively clear picture from Rhodey because Rhodey has never made an effort to gloss over his flaws. He thought it was counter productive and Tony agreed.
T’Challa considers him for a long moment, “thank you,” he says softly and the admission throws Tony. “For acknowledging my mistakes and for taking the circumstances of my decisions into account. But mostly I appreciate that you chose to focus on the good, however little of it there is, because that is important and so, so impressive to me. It takes strength to note a person’s good qualities even after you have been hurt by them and I am not the only one you have done that with,” T’Challa says. The Avengers, he means, even if he doesn’t out and out say that.
“Most people think that’s a weakness,” Tony points out.
“People who believe there is weakness in showing kindness and empathy towards those who have hurt you are the reason why this world is so cruel. You are not weak because you care; you are strong because of it. I have gone over your life’s events more than once and I truly marvel at your ability to get back up every time something else goes wrong. I do not think I have the kind of strength to face the hardships you have,” T’Challa admits quietly.
“Sure you do. You’re here now, aren’t you? Dealing with the death of a parent is hard, running a country is hard, and dealing with a soul mate that has no idea if he should trust you is hard. Besides, I’m not seeing the good in the Avengers because I want to; the Avengers are the worst thing that has ever happened to me. None of this bullshit that’s splattered my life for the better part of the last decade would have happened if I had just stuck to doing things on my own but past me is a fucking idiot and decided being on a superhero team was a good idea. But they have the potential to do a lot of good, they have done a lot of good, and I can’t just ignore that because I want to shove them all through a meat grinder,” he says. It was simple logic, just because a person was shitty to him didn’t mean that same person was shitty to everyone else. The rest of the Avengers got along marvelously without him so clearly he was the problem anyways. Also simple logic, he was the common denominator after all.
“There is nothing wrong with your anger, Tony, you are more than entitled to it. But unlike most you know the difference between anger and maliciousness and that is a strength very very few people possess. That is impressive Tony, you are impressive. It angers me that so few people look past their own misconceptions to see who you truly are, that they are content with only seeing the bad without ever acknowledging the good. Worse, the Avengers like to conveniently forget that your actions do not exist in a vacuum and that they often play a role in why you make the decisions you do. Steve Rogers in particular annoys me. A good leader looks at a situation from all angles and examines how their own actions could have influenced a situation and a good leader takes responsibility for their part. They do not scapegoat people because that is easier than accepting his own mistakes! Fool,” T’Challa all but snarls.
Tony considers the words, ducking his head for a moment in attempt to hide the smile on his face. It wasn’t a happy smile either, more like a smile of relief that finally someone realized that he wasn’t some floating island in the middle of the sea somehow managing to fuck everything up. He was part of a dysfunctional system and yeah, he defected more then the others, but he also knew that and they never assumed they had anything to do with things going wrong. It was always him, even when other people were clearly and openly involved. Like Ultron and Bruce was right there, he admitted to agreeing to run the program on the damn stone, he told everyone that he was out and out involved.
And yet Thor strangled him, Steve rode his ass for keeping secrets; the team alienated him for actions that he wasn’t solely responsible for. Clint even blamed him for throwing them in jail for fucks sakes. They broke the fucking law, what did they expect, special treatment? Yes, actually, it’s what they’ve all been expecting for far too long and that was down right irresponsible. No one else got treated like they did, and those that did shouldn’t, so what the fuck made them so special as to be above all laws and regulations? And Steve called him arrogant? And Natasha? A least he knew when enough was enough when it really counted.
They weren’t special snowflakes, at least not the should-be-above-all-laws-and-regulations-for-no-real-reason kind. They were kind of special, and Tony liked to think he’d make a cute snowflake, but they were essentially a super powered taskforce and they went all over the world. The world should have a say in how that task force is run if they had any hope of helping these people. Ignoring them because Steve was arrogant enough to assume his agenda was always the best one is unacceptable, and Steve would agree (has agreed) if it were Tony’s agenda they were all supposed to follow. Because only he can be arrogant and self-obsessed and prone to poor decision-making, right?
And T’Challa… T’Challa agreed with him, saw how arrogant Steve was being, how stupid the rest of the team was being. He saw that they were all blindly following Steve around for no real reason because they were all human, enhanced or not, they were human and that meant they’d never be perfect. They couldn’t count on their decisions to be the best ones, they should listen to the feedback of those around them, that’s what made good allyship. But he was wrong, just like always. It was surprising and somewhat relieving that T’Challa didn’t fall into that pattern and when he did he apologized. Actually apologized.
“I wish I hated them enough to hurt them,” Tony whispers finally, fiercely. As a general rule of not being like Howard he didn’t often wish pain on people but there were just some things that were unforgivable. There weren’t many people who landed on that list well and truly, Killian was the only recent example outside the Avengers thanks to his nearly killing Happy and Pepper, but the Avengers could congratulate themselves on hitting a new level anger he didn’t even know he had.
T’Challa’s hand landing on his own makes him jump from the unexpected touch and the jolt that went with it. “I do not believe that you actually think that. I understand why you would, you gave them everything you had and they threw it all back in your face, ungrateful for your help. In the end you even gave up your position on the Accords to help Steve Rogers only to find that he betrayed you once again. That alone is unforgivable; I would never forgive someone who lied about my parents’ death like that. It is despicable,” T’Challa spits, “but you are not malicious by nature, even when pushed. You rarely hit a breaking point, and when you do it is always after someone you love gets hurt. I think that nature, your ability to let go until that point, is indicative of an impressive well of compassion and strength. Even now, after all the Avengers have done, you still help because that is who you are. Not the anger that threatens to boil over.”
The words are earnest, true. Tony lets out a harsh laugh that sends pain lacing through his ribs because T’Challa, in less than a month, knew more about him than people who lived with him for years. That was a fucking cruel twist on fate’s behalf and he got it, he deserved it for all he did pre-Iron Man but that didn’t mean he liked it any. And hell, he wasn’t even much good at trying to atone for his actions now, try as he might. “I can’t believe you have a better grasp on my personality than Steve. He lived with me for almost a decade, you read like three files. That’s fucking embarrassing. For him, I mean,” Tony clarifies.
“I read far more than three files, but yes, it has become abundantly clear that I know you considerably better than most. I, however, find it sad rather than embarrassing. You are an amazing person, and I am very lucky to have you as my soul mate. Perhaps even undeserving,” T’Challa says softly. Tony frowns at him because he couldn’t really imagine a world in which someone was underserving of him as a soul mate. Except Hammer, he was so shitty he didn’t even deserve Steve as a soul mate and those two jackasses deserved each other. But even as angry as he was he wouldn’t wish a fate like that on any of the Avengers, that was just cruel.